


Four Stars Out Of Five

by genmitsu



Series: Thorns [3]
Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Established Relationship, I am serious, M/M, Not What It Looks Like, enter at your own risk, major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2019-08-23
Packaged: 2020-09-25 00:20:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20367520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/genmitsu/pseuds/genmitsu
Summary: Jim Gordon is hopelessly in love with Oswald Cobblepot. Just one catch - Oswald is a married man and being with Jim makes him a cheater... or does it?---A hotel. An impossibly expensive one too, of course, because money buys silence and the best establishments are worth their price for privacy. And it happens way less than Jim would prefer, anyway, so he can splurge on comfort too. Of course, Oswald bent over the hood of a car turns him on no less than Oswald lying on silk sheets, but silk sheets leave fewer bruises.





	Four Stars Out Of Five

**Author's Note:**

> It says so in the tags, but I'll say it again. This story _is not what it seems._ So despite the creepy tags and summary, I hope you might give this story a chance.
> 
> Got the idea for this plot from Fall Out Boy's _Headfirst Slide Into Cooperstown on a Bad Bet_ song. It kept going in circles in my head forever but I was never inclined to write THAT much angst. And then I finally got the idea for the ending that would tie it up neatly.
> 
> The title is based on Arctic Monkeys' _Four Out Of Five_ song though :) It felt right.

A hotel. An impossibly expensive one too, of course, because money buys silence and the best establishments are worth their price for privacy. And it happens way less than Jim would prefer, anyway, so he can splurge on comfort too. Of course, Oswald bent over the hood of a car turns him on no less than Oswald lying on silk sheets, but silk sheets leave fewer bruises.

Oswald comes in later and locks the door behind him. Jim is watching him, enraptured, taking in his appearance, his whole look, drinking it in and trying to save it for days to come. It’s doomed from the start.

Oswald takes off his ring and puts it on the table before approaching Jim. Now Oswald’s his. For a few measly hours Oswald belongs to Jim.

Not fully, no. Jim can’t tear the clothes off him so the seams would split, he can’t grab his hips and press him impossibly closer, he can’t leave marks of his lips and teeth on Oswald’s skin. Everything that happens between them now, Jim is borrowing, stealing from another man, an incredibly happy another man who managed to become Oswald’s husband. But is he really happy if Oswald keeps coming to Jim, if he keeps on deceiving him to come to those hotel rooms time and again to kiss Jim’s lips?

Jim hugs Oswald as close as he dares to, wraps his arms around him, and kisses him. Even the kiss can’t be made as passionate as Jim wants it to be. He wants to give Oswald’s lips little bites, he wants to kiss them firmly, make them red and puffy from his onslaught. Instead, he slides his tongue into Oswald’s mouth. That is allowed. There’s a slight aftertaste of coffee, and Jim smiles as he deepens the kiss and tries to get a better taste of him until Oswald starts struggling for breath.

Jim undresses him carefully, caressing his pale, almost white skin. Any kind of mark would glare on it, as obvious as a signal flare, and just as eye-catching. Jim wants to cover all of Oswald’s skin in his marks, claiming his rights to this person, whom he needs more than anyone else in the world, for whom he’s ready to degrade himself, for whom he’s ready to lie and betray, for whom he gets up in the morning. Despite it all Oswald doesn’t allow him any of that, taking care not to leave anything that could be noticed by his husband and make him upset. He must love him after all. But he loves Jim too - or, at least, he loves sex with him.

Jim has to be satisfied with that.

Oswald is aroused by their long waiting even more than Jim is, it seems, and he hurries to lose his clothes, dropping the articles on the floor. Jim helps him, but he keeps stopping to appreciate Oswald’s nakedness, he keeps stopping to kiss him, to caress and stroke his bared parts. Jim doesn’t want to hurry at all. He wants to do it slowly, tenderly, without thinking of waking up alone in that bed. But they always do it the way Oswald wants to, and Oswald wants it quick, rough, furious, and it drives Jim mad because while he isn’t allowed to mark Oswald, Oswald himself is free of such restrictions.

He straddles Jim’s hips and lowers himself onto Jim’s cock, biting his lower lip as he hurries to get all of it inside. Jim tries to slow him down, but Oswald moves as if he’s possessed, as if he wants to melt into Jim with all of his body, and the rhythm he sets is mercilessly quick and it makes them both come in no time at all, as if they were horny teenagers. Oswald keeps trying to get closer, and he bites at Jim’s shoulder and drags his nails over his back.

They’re still panting when they lean towards each other for a kiss. There’s so little time, none of it to waste on talking. They can tell it all with their bodies, surrendering themselves to this passion and drowning in it.

Oswald isn’t tender with him, not at all. Jim hurts all over from his caresses, his whole body a crime scene, covered in evidence of their descent. Jim is unable to bare himself in front of anyone else without opening himself to questions about the multitude of hickeys, scratches, bruises left by Oswald’s firm grip. Jim is forever trapped, wrapped in a cocoon of this touch, poisoned with spider venom of love.

He sometimes wonders what kind of person that is whom Oswald guards so carefully from their dirty truth. Jim never tried to learn who he was, understanding he would not be able to resist punching him, at the very least. He also wants to destroy him, to erase him from the face of the Earth for managing to steal Oswald from Jim. Thinking about it Jim entertains the thought of leaving a small mark somewhere on Oswald’s body, a tiny mark, but his own. To make Oswald stay his for a little while longer.

Sometimes Jim fantasizes about really doing it and making the truth of them come to light. Or about Oswald’s husband walking in on them, giving Oswald an ultimatum and making him choose. Jim fantasizes about Oswald choosing him, about never having to be careful anymore and just being able to love Oswald, no looking over his shoulder, no restraints, no thinking about some third wheel. He keeps up these blissful fantasies as Oswald drives into him, hot and rough, as he moans for Oswald and moves his hips to match him, and only his orgasm makes his head wonderfully blank.

‘Stay’, he begs, knowing Oswald’s answer beforehand and still being unable to refrain.

Oswald shakes his head. Oswald puts his ring back on. Oswald leaves.

Jim is lying on the crumpled sheets that still smell like them both and dreaming about throwing that damn ring from the window and making Oswald stay with him, just with him, forever.

Instead, they end up meeting less often. Jim is practically going up the wall from longing. Jim is being torn apart by jealousy, passion, and yearning, the marks on his body long gone and he misses them so much it hurts. He feels naked without them. He keeps rubbing his skin, trying to convince himself that this bruise wasn’t made by him. That Oswald’s lips were the ones that left this hickey. That Oswald touched him, him alone, that he hadn’t forgotten about him and that he still loved him, or at least loved having sex with him.

Jim is ready to crawl on his knees wherever, if only to have Oswald touch him.

When they meet in a hotel room again Jim comes even before Oswald approaches him, not to mention any touching.

Oswald himself is almost dazed. He keeps clawing at Jim’s back, making him arch it, and hiss, and moan. Oswald bites Jim’s lips with enough strength to almost draw blood, and Jim whimpers, pressing even closer to him. He’s sick from yearning for Oswald and missing him, and Oswald could be tearing him apart and Jim would only be happy to feel the warm touch of his hands.

‘I’m leaving’, Oswald says after they’re done.

‘Will you be gone long?’ Jim asks, mellow and weakened by their passion.

‘I’m leaving for good.’

He says that he’s tired of this city. That he’s sick of having to sneak around and that he can’t take it anymore. There’s the ultimatum Jim wanted, and the decision that Jim wanted.

Only Jim isn’t Oswald’s ultimate choice.

Jim’s heart aches as if it’s being broken into pieces by cruel hands. By slim, strong fingers, endlessly beloved, endlessly cruel.

‘Stay’, Jim wants to say, but his lungs are empty of oxygen. He’s gasping, his vision grows dark, he’s falling into a bottomless pit, falling away from Oswald with every second, and the darkness folds over him, squeezing the last bits of air from him, and it’s cold, cold, cold…

Jim jerks, coming awake, and sits on the bed, gasping. His heart is beating like crazy.

“What’s wrong, Jim?” Oswald lifts his head from the pillow and rubs sleepily at his eyes. There’s a glint of a ring on his finger.

“Nothing…” Jim glances at his own hand. Same ring there. “Just had a nightmare.”

“I told you not to eat Mexican for dinner, and in this heat…” Oswald shifts closer to Jim and embraces him. Tender. Sweet. Safe. “You just don’t listen to me…”

“I do,” Jim smiles, lying back and covering Oswald’s hand with his own. “Always.”

“Yeah, yeah…” Oswald mumbles and burrows into Jim’s shoulder. “I noticed…”

Jim kisses his temple before drifting off to sleep again.

He spends the morning making love to his husband, with greatest pleasure too, and he leaves an enormous hickey on his pale neck. Oswald tries to chastise him, saying he’s a public figure and he can’t go around flaunting his personal life like that, but Jim just interrupts him with a sloppy kiss.

“Wear a turtleneck,” he suggests, breaking off, and Oswald laughs and brings him for another kiss.

Jim sticks to eating Mexican for lunch.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Oh god I hope you got here and it made the trek through angst worth it. Thank you!
> 
> No offense was intended to Mexican food, I just wanted Jim to eat something really hot and rich, and it was the first one that popped into my mind.  
In Jim's nightmare world Oswald's husband wasn't anyone he knew from Gotham. Just a random person who somehow turned out better than he was - or at least that's what I think.
> 
> Feedback would be sooooo appreciated, you have no idea. Especially on a weird story like this one.


End file.
